


Unstructured Reality

by snowdarkred



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Abduction, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mistaken Identity, Muffins, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 10:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdarkred/pseuds/snowdarkred
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur won't (can't) tell them anything, because if he does they will know that he is not Eames, and that would be very, very bad for Eames' health. (Or, I Apparently Really, Really Like Having the Bad Guys Tie Arthur Up and Eames Save Him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unstructured Reality

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to shanachie_quill for looking this over (despite the fact that we had an extremely silly and intense ten minute debate over AIM about the proper use of commas) - you rock my socks like always, darling.
> 
> SINCE APPARENTLY THIS HAS BECOME A THING: I wrote this, like, two weeks after the movie came out. I know it has what quickly became fandom cliches. I know. 1) I was seventeen when I wrote this. Who writes super well at seventeen? 2) IT WAS TWO WEEKS AFTER THE MOVIE CAME OUT.

He gets up at six-twenty-two every morning. He cracks his left shoulder (broken six years ago, aches when air pressure drops), then his left (shot four years ago when a mark woke up first), and finally his neck (twisted so many times in dreams). He puts one foot on the floor, and then the other. He reaches into the bedside table and pulls out a handgun. He puts it to his temple.

 

He doesn't pull the trigger.

 

\---

 

People think that Arthur is a careful man. They see his sharply pressed suit, his sharply slicked back hair, and his sharply honed gaze, and they think that he must be the sort of man who weighs each word as he speaks. They think that he goes through life in methodical steps, as if anyone who regularly collides their subconscious with their reality could ever be methodical at heart. Could ever be the sort of man who hesitates to  _think_  before throwing himself into danger. They look at his sharply smooth and smoothly cutting exterior and think that they can sum him up in just a few words, reduce him to some simple concepts – competent, cool, _careful_.

 

He's not careful. He's just not stupid. It's a distinction that is lost on most people.

 

Sadly, or not sadly, Eames is not most people. And most people are not, thank the gods, Eames.

 

\---

 

When he first met Eames, Arthur had been horrified with the print of his shirt, the wrinkles in his pants (trousers), and the cut of his terrifying tweed jacket. Individually, any of these items might not have been so bad (except for the wrinkles), but this forger, this Eames, had no concept of restraint. He wore it all at once, a loud discordant mesh of styles that really, really shouldn't go together—

 

—Except for how they mysteriously did.

 

It drove Arthur mad. (Now he can look back and smile, but then all he could think was,  _I am not allowed to murder a teammate over his fashion sense; it is unprofessional and unbecoming and bad for business._ )

 

It made Eames smile.

 

(Arthur compromised by shooting Eames in the face the first the time they went under together.)

 

\---

 

Arthur fucking  _loves_  his job.

 

\---

 

Arthur may also love fucking Eames. Or maybe he just fucking loves him.

 

(But not his sartorial choices. He could never love that, Jesus Christ.)

 

(But he totally does anyway.)

 

\---

 

Habits can get you killed. Smoking can kill you slowly, over time, when your body hands you the bill for all the chemicals you've pumped into your lungs. (This doesn't stop Arthur. Or Eames. They steal cigarettes back and forth like high school students sneaking behind the bleachers during gym.) Gambling can suck you dry and leave you to hang, with Lady Luck and the casinos laughing their way to your bank. (Arthur plays with loaded dice; Eames just makes his own poker chips.) Compulsive shopping can leave you with a closet full of suits and nowhere to wear them. (Except work.)

 

Going to buy coffee at the same cafe every day is a bad habit for a criminal on the run from dangerous organizations the world over.

 

He doesn't even see the blow to the head coming. He just feels the pain. The last thing he thinks before he loses consciousness is,  _Fuck, I forgot to buy Eames his muffin._

 

_\---_

 

He wakes up tied to a chair in a warehouse, because his life is just that much of a cliché. He's not alone. There is a man with a gun behind him, probably six-foot-one, six-foot-two, and he stands still enough to let Arthur know that this isn't his first rodeo, but he's not a true professional. (Arthur can read his height in his breathing and his lack of training in his stiffness. The gun is common sense. Arthur is  _good_.) The windows (high, building probably constructed in the 1920s) are covered in tarps, catching any light before it comes through and blocking any indicators of where they took him. There is one door to his left, another on the opposite side of room. He can reach neither.

 

His head feels like it's splitting open, and there's blood dripping down onto his shirt collar, but he can't think of that now. He has to escape. He has to make sure that they didn't go after Eames. He has to make sure that his forger is safe.

 

The door to his left opens. A man is framed in washed out sunlight; Arthur squints because it makes him appear more confused than he really is. One step inside, and then another, and then the door (Arthur's only way out alive, his only chance) slams shut like a judge's gavel.

 

(He's so fucking screwed.)

 

\---

 

They demand to know what was uncovered in the Gordon job. When Arthur doesn't answer (can't answer), they hit him. Each blow jars his head and sends fire running through his nerves and down his spine, but he doesn't give them what they want – because he can't. He hadn't done the Gordon job.

 

Eames had. They think he's Eames. He can't tell them anything because while he holds his silence – while they call him  _Mr. Eames_  in a pathetic attempt to seem more pretentious than they could ever hope to be – Eames is safe. If they're hitting Arthur, they aren't hitting  _him_.

 

And that makes it worth it.

 

It still hurts like a motherfucker.

 

\---

 

The first time he slept with Eames, he was drunk. This was to be expected. No one should be sober after having to deal with the day they'd had: Their flight had been delayed three times before finally being canceled, they had been mistaken for FBI's Most Wanted by airport security (as if the US government would reveal them on anything less than a secret CIA kill order), and then chased from the premises after Eames' suitcase chose the exact wrong moment to fall apart and spill several condoms and fake IDs right as said security was apologizing.

 

Arthur made Eames buy him vodka at the hotel bar. He wanted to be  _so_  drunk. Eames had laughed and unsubtly told the bartender to start watering down his drinks halfway through. Somehow arguing about it (“I'm paying, darling,” Eames had smirked; “With stolen money,” Arthur had refuted, but the words had slurred together.) had turned into kissing in the elevator, which had turned into kissing in the hallway, which had led to some truly epic drunken sex on Eames' bed.

 

Arthur is still not sure how that happened. He doesn't mind.

 

(He still hates Eames' clothes.)

 

(Except when they're littered on the floor. They're perfectly fine there.)

 

\---

 

They beat him until he bleeds, but they don't get so much as a whimper out of him. Amateurs. He's died a thousand times. Been tortured by hundreds of minds. He didn't break when he had nothing at stake, and he's not going to break now. (When he has everything at stake.)

 

\---

 

It is so easy to lose track of time. He's covered in bruises, and he can't move the last two fingers on his right hand. He spits blood in the tall guy's face, gets backhanded for it. He's been interrogated much more skillfully, before, and with more vigor, but while that ensures that he doesn't break, it doesn't stop him from feeling pain. He tries to gather the feeling up, lock it away in a box at the back of his mind, but the blow to the head he'd been given is making him dizzy. His vision keeps sliding in and out of focus, and he knows that he has a concussion.

 

“Mr. Eames, this is becoming tiresome,” the second man says in a droll, droning voice, playing like he's bored. (He's not; he derives too much pleasure from inflicting pain. He probably tortured small animals as a child.) “The more you resist, the more we hurt you. Just tell us what we want to know, and we can put a stop to this.” Put a bullet in his brain, more like. Or, even more likely, just torture him some more.

 

Arthur coughs wetly, laughs like his voice is shattering with each breath. Says, “Fuck you.”

 

Says, “Go ahead. I'm not going to tell you anything.”

 

The droll man smiles, and the man with gun raises his fist. This is going to hurt.

 

(Definitely tortured small animals.)

 

\---

 

Logically, Arthur knows that he's going to die here. He's died before, in dreams, again and again, until he can hardly remember who and what and how. He's been shot, stabbed, drowned, beaten, strangled, blown up, eviscerated, and thrown off of several very tall buildings (and some that weren't quite tall enough). He knows what it feels like, what it sounds like, what it tastes like. (Blood, usually, though he was poisoned once with arsenic, which had left a lingering aftertaste in his mouth that refused to fade even after he'd died and woken up.) He knows exactly how much it takes to die in any one of those situations.

 

He's almost died in reality a few times as well. Sometimes in the same manners, though he has managed to avoid being thrown off of buildings so far. Maybe Mr. Droll and Mr. Gunman are planning on changing that.

 

As long as they leave Eames alone, he doesn't care.

 

\---

 

(That's a lie. He very much cares that they're about to kill him because, well, he's not suicidal. He doesn't want to die.

 

But between the two of them, Arthur thinks that the world could manage without him far more than it could manage with Eames. Life needs to be cheated every once in awhile.)

 

\---

 

Arthur doesn't think that he'll be saved before they slice his throat or bash his head in or whatever it is that they're planning on doing.

 

(This is also a lie. He just can't, can't, acknowledge it as such because—)

 

\---

 

—Eames, the stupid, stubborn, fucking bastard, saves him.

 

One minute Arthur's got Mr. Gunman's hand around his throat, squeezing tighter than a boa constrictor, the next, there's a shot that echoes around the warehouse. Mr. Gunman is on the floor, dead, skull in pieces – head shot. Mr. Droll turns to run and doesn't make it three steps before he's down as well, bleeding and swearing uselessly, red staining the back of his suit jacket. Arthur watches with a strange kind of detachment as Eames steps (runs) out of the shadows, jumps over Mr. Gunman's body, and straight to Arthur.

 

“Oh, love, oh fuck, bloody fucking hell, shite,” he swears softly, kneeling in front of the point man. His hands hover inches away from Arthur's head, as if he's afraid that one touch might shatter him to pieces. “Arthur? Arthur, darling, can you—”

 

Arthur grunts softly, because he's lost his voice to relief. His lips (bruised, split, bleeding) quirk into the closest he can get to a smile in his condition. Eames tries to smile back, but it doesn't quite work out; his hands flutter to Arthur's sides and his legs before flying back up to his face, like he can't decide what needs his attention first.

 

“Let's get you untied, okay?” he whispers. “Then we'll get you fixed right up. Well, we'll finish killing your new mates here, and maybe find out if there will be any other unpleasant introductions in our future, but then you and I are going to take a nice, long trip somewhere that is not here. Any suggestions?” Pause. “Arthur. Arthur, answer me please. Can you talk? Did they—?” Eames sounds like he's working his way into a panic attack. In that moment, Arthur is absurdly fond of him. (In addition to loving him, but then, that's nothing new.)

 

Arthur swallows roughly. It hurts. He opens his mouth and says, “I forgot your muffin.”

 

Eames rocks back on his heels and laughs.

 

\---

 

If Eames' laughter borders on hysterical, Arthur's not going to mention it. Those in glass houses. Stones. You know the saying.

 

\---

 

The morning after Eames saves Arthur from morons who can't do simple research about who is who, Arthur gets up at six-twenty-two. He cracks his left shoulder (broken six years ago, aches when air pressure drops), then his left (shot four years ago when a mark woke up first), and finally his neck (twisted so many times in dreams). He puts one foot on the floor, and then the other. He reaches into the bedside table and pulls out a handgun.

 

And Eames says, “Bloody hell, darling, if you do that one more time, I am going to make an actual superhuman effort to deny you sex for the rest of your life.”

 

Arthur puts the gun down and crawls back into bed. (He shoves his feet between Eames' legs just to hear him yelp at the cold.)

 

\---

 

(And in the end, they take care of Mr. Droll and Mr. Gunman, verify who hired them, and then rain unholy hell on the bastard. Then they catch a flight to nowhere in particular and disappear for awhile, just to prove that they can.)

 

\---

 

Arthur, in fact, buys Eames two muffins the next chance he gets. 


End file.
